it just really makes me feel a certain kind of way on tonight of all nights, when pete said this was the best tour ever, when patrick decided to do this exceedingly vulnerable thing and play a song they've never done live (and that pete said they wouldn't ever do live), dark alley and then following it up with what a catch and then transitioning into don't stop believing with the whole band - what kind of 8ball could compare to that?

bob dylan was the last song we really got from fall out boy until so much (for) stardust. they wrote it back during abap era but scrapped it. it was joe that pushed for its inclusion on believers never die volume 2, making it one of two tracks that were exclusive to that record. the second was dear future self, which was released as a single ahead of time to promote hellamegatour, so when we got the full bnd2 record...fob dylan was basically the last new music we got from fall out boy for a good five years. bnd2 was released in november 2019. it wouldn't be until january 2023 that we got "love from the other side". and it didnt feel like a potential "end" the way the hiatus did, at least not to me, but i did go into bnd2 knowing it'd probably be a while before we'd get new fall out boy music. so as much as i adored the song, there was a bittersweet tinge to it.

there's just something in that. something in beginnings and endings and "what ifs" and "never coulds." dark alley was a song that could've been left as a quiet footnote to a deeply unhappy time in pete wentz's life, but wasn't. what a catch could've marked the formal end of fall out boy's career and trajectory, but didn't. bob dylan could've been the last song we got from fall out boy ever, but it wasn't.

believers truly never die, do they?